This thread is intended as a guide for newbies/noobs, feedback is welcome!

The Basics Of The EMS World

FreeEMS is an Engine Management System (EMS) with Free (as in freedom and price) source code and hardware designs. Typically you need an EMS when you modify a car. The reasons for using an EMS like FreeEMS include some of the following:

Fuel injection and/or electronic ignition on an old carburettor/distributor/points engine

Transplant a newer engine into an older car without some things the original ECU needs

Any power adders, such as turbo, supercharger, nitrous, camshafts, ITBs, extractors, etc.

Education and learning about EFI and electronic ignition systems on engines

Data-logging and fine tuning

Controlling more solenoids than an OEM (GM/Ford/Toyota/Mazda/etc) ECU can

In the case of FreeEMS, running custom control strategies

If you fall into some (or all!) of these categories, or for any other reason, carry on reading below, you could be in luck! :-)

What type of sensors it has (RPM/Position, temperature, pressure, etc)

What type of control hardware it has (solenoids, coils, injectors, etc)

What power adders it has (camshafts, turbo, supercharger, nitrous oxide, etc)

What It Means To FreeEMS

The distributor(s) or cam angle sensor(s) or crank angle sensor(s) or some combination of the above require a piece of software called a "decoder" to be read and made sense of in the FreeEMS internal software (firmware from here on). Inside these devices are metal disks, wheels, cogs, pulleys, etc with physical patterns on them such as this one:

These physical patterns get read by Variable Reluctance, Hall or Optical sensors and produce a matching electrical signal that is conditioned by the circuits in a FreeEMS box and then read by the decoder software.

Hey Jesse, thanks for that. That file no longer exists, it was replaced with simple policy: If a decoder is present *in the build*, it must work, and be usable. Some skeleton decoders are present but NOT built, ignore them.

Is there a standard or generic board available that uses the HCS12XDP512 specifically for use with freeems that is available? If not, would it be ok if as some of your members to join me in making a batch?

You can make personal not-for-profit batches of the Jaguar and assemble: viewforum.php?f=67

Note that the current version (0.7-alpha) uses pressure sensors that were nearing end of line last I checked, so you may have trouble sourcing them. Not a deal breaker as you can use off-board MAP sensors for both MAP and AAP (if desired).

A new revision may come at some point with those fixes, work has been done against it. If you were brave you could build the untested/unreviewed board from the branch and try it.

I have no problem paying for hardware since it can save a lot of time and frustration on a project that might already have a pretty steep learning curve. You and DuceEFI, and others have done an amazing amount of work on this project and have been very gracious by sharing it with others. -- Thank you.

I would strongly urge you to be in close contact and fully document your intended build before ordering anything, though.

Once we know what you have, what you need, and what you need to be able to do with it, then we can advise what level of readiness the system has for your application and how much effort/risk will be involved.

IRC, freenode, #freeems for real-time QA stuff, but chuck up a users' rides thread about the target vehicle with engine specifics and we can go from there.

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